Home  PLA Blogs ALA Midwinter Meeting

January 12, 2004
For Immediate Release
From: Kathleen Hughes, PLA
312-280-4028

PLA BLOGS ALA MIDWINTER MEETING

PLA's first official weblog made its debut at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. The PLA blog effort was begun by librarian, consultant, and blogger Steven M. Cohen, who is best known as the

proprietor of LibraryStuff.net and also serves as the Internet Spotlight columnist for "Public Libraries" magazine. They'll test the waters by sending out a posse of volunteer librarian/bloggers to report on PLA-related meetings and events at ALA's Midwinter meeting in Boston, January 14-19, 2005.

Cohen made the announcement in a December 8, 2004 post on Library Stuff by saying, "We're going to blog it and we're going to blog hard," adding, "and we're going to do it right." Approximately a dozen bloggers, many long-time practitioners and a few newbies, will

fan out to cover meetings, exhibits, programs, networking functions and events such as the President's Programs and receptions. In addition to text posts, bloggers will share pictures of their experiences as well.

The mission of the PLA blog in general, and the Midwinter effort in particular, is twofold: First is to get the national library associations in the United States excited about blogging," according

to Cohen. Second, and equally, if not more important, is to use the blog to make the conference more immediate and accessible to those unable to attend but who want to "play along at home."

The announcement was met with enthusiasm by several long-time bloggers including Jenny Levine of ShiftedLibrarian.com and Karen Schneider of FreeRangeLibrarian.com, (Schneider will be lending her talents to the Midwinter blogfest.) Levine predicted in a January 8, 2005 ShiftedLibrarian post that "this will be the start of something big."

The blog is at http://www.plablog.org/ PLA is a division of the American Library Association.

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